What is On-page SEO and Why Are They Important?
So basically, It is a practice where we optimize the web pages of our website in order to rank higher in search engines. In this, we optimize both the content and code of the page.
For example:
- Optimizing the meta title, meta description, headings, URL, and content on the page are some examples of On-Page optimization.
All of these factors are in your control and you can take actions to optimize them. And since, all of this is done on the website or on the webpage, that’s why it is called On-Page SEO or On-site SEO.
Why On-Page SEO is important?
The thing is that search engines want to provide the best experience to their users. And in order to fulfill that need, they need to understand the content of the pages which they are showing in the search results.
And On-Page SEO helps search engines to understand the relevancy of the content of your page. So, a better-optimized page means a better chance to resolve the user’s search query. It also means that if a user visits your page, he or she is going to have a good user experience.
13 Ranking Factors of On-Page Optimization
Now let’s see the different factors that affect On-Page SEO. I will quickly share 13 factors that affection-site SEO. And if you are a WordPress user, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to keep an eye on these factors. This plugin specifically tells you all the factors you need to consider in order to optimize your webpage.
Focus keyword: - It tells the search engines what your content is about. This keyword helps you to target specific search queries. Make sure you sprinkle your focus keyword in your content.
Your goal should be to keep the keyword density within 1.5% or 2%. You can also use synonyms and different variations of your main keyword. Think of Google as a big dictionary. It will understand if you use synonyms and different variations.
For example,
- The phrases ‘why SEO is important and ‘importance of SEO’ are one and the same thing. One important thing here is that you need to avoid keyword stuffing. It is basically a black hat technique where you unnecessarily put your keyword here and there in order to cheat the search engine algorithm.
Title tag - It is simply the title of your page that appears in the search results. You need to put your keyword in the title tag also. This will help the search engines understand what your content is about.
For best practice, keep the length of your title around 50 characters. Another improvement that you can do here is putting the keyword at the beginning of your title.
Meta description - It is a small description that appears below the page title on the search engine results page. In the meta description, you put a small summary that describes the content of your page. The best practice is to keep the meta description between 120 to 160 characters.
You should put your focus keyword in the meta description also. Here’s one tip to keep in mind while writing a title and meta description for your page. Keep them eye-catchy so that you get more and more clicks. This in turn helps you in getting higher rankings in search results.
URL of your page - Again put your target keyword in the URL of your page. And try to keep the URL as short as possible. Also, make sure that the URL is clean and simple. And it doesn’t contain special characters and stuff as it affects your site structure. A simple URL is better for your website than a complex one.
Content of your page - It doesn’t matter if you do all the things right and applies the best practices. But if your content is not good, if it doesn’t meet the requirements of the user, then you’re not going to rank.
So, the content you want to put in should be created by keeping in mind the requirement of the user. The content should be easily readable.
Again, the Yoast SEO plugin can help you with that also. Also, don’t put up duplicate content on your website. Why? Because if you put similar content on multiple pages of your website, it will only confuse the search engine. And we obviously don’t want that.
Heading tags - They vary from H1 to H6. The H1 tag signifies the highest level of heading. It contains the main heading of the page. H2 contains the sub-headings. And if you want to classify the content of your page furthermore, you can use H3, H4, and so on.
These heading tags help us in giving a proper structure to our website. So, we need to put our focus keyword in theH1 tag also. And if you need you can sometimes put the keyword in the lower level heading tags also.
Page Speed- It means how fast your page loads when someone opens it. We know that On-Page SEO is all about proving a great experience to the users. And a fast-loading page means a better user experience.
You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Gtmetrix, and Ubersuggest to check the page speed of your website. Ideally, it should be under 3 seconds.
There are a lot of techniques like caching and minifying JS and CSS which you can implement in order to optimize your page for higher speed.
Images optimization - We know that Images boost the user experience. But on the other hand, they also slow down the page. So, we need to make sure that the images we use are properly optimized. And how can we do that? We can use tools like tiny png which significantly decreases the size of an image without affecting its quality. If you are a WordPress user, you can also use plugins like Smush for Image optimization.
Alt tags for the images - we use on our website. In the alt tag, you can put the description of the image in 3-4 words. It helps the search engines to understand what the particular image is about.
Internal and External Links - So, when you link one page of your website with another page of your website, then it is called Internal Linking. And when you link a page of your website with a page of some other website, then it is called External Linking. Both internal and external links play an important role in On-Page SEO.
Internal linking helps you to drive traffic to other pages of your website as well. And external links help the search engines to understand the context of the content. Also, make sure that the page you are linking to is relevant to the content of the page.
Anchor text- It is a word or phrase on which when you click, you are redirected to some other page. It can be the page of the same website or the page of some other website.
For example,
- I type a statement ‘Let us connect on Linkedin’. Then I can link the word LinkedIn with my LinkedIn profile. And in this statement, the word LinkedIn will be the anchor text. This anchor text describes the page you are linking to.
Mobile-friendly website - You need to make sure that your website is responsive. It should adjust itself when the screen size changes. Having a mobile-friendly website plays a very important role in the user experience.
Why?
Because more than 60% of the searches are done through mobile devices. You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check if your website is responsive or not.
So, that was all about On-Page SEO and the13 factors affecting it. I hope this article added some value to your life.
